


Juke Box Hero

by wonderwhatthisbuttondoes



Series: Juke Box Hero [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Historical setting: New York city during the Vietnam War, M/M, Multi, Period Typical Attitudes, Peter is basically Tony's apprentice, Songfic, Tony drinks, early 1970's, slowly-coming-out-of-the-closet steve, street-level superheroes, working class Tony AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 19:26:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16859929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes/pseuds/wonderwhatthisbuttondoes
Summary: Universe/setting: Iron Man AU set in early 1970’s New York.  Differs from 616 comics canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22.  All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.-“The Avengers found Captain America,” Luke told him.“Oh, god…”  Tony sighed, shutting his eyes, “-I didn’t even know he’d gotten loose.”“No, man.  You ain’t hearing me,” Luke cut across Tony’s darkening thoughts, “-the Avengers found Cap.  The REAL deal.  -Alive.”Tony was silent.“Are they sure?”  He asked, after a moment.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to the livejournal group 'Everything Left Unsaid'. Thanks to blackbirdbaroness for the fic-rec that helped me find it again.
> 
> Yes, this is mine to post. I wrote the whole series in a crappy roominghouse apt. in Salem, Massachussetts nearly a decade ago now, and yes I still have the Arc Reactor prop that's in my old LJ icon pic.
> 
> Again: This was written before ANY Avengers movie was made. It's based on Marvel comics canon, and a few details from the first 'Iron Man' and 'Spider Man' movies, /that's it/.
> 
> AU inspired by one of Obiwan's Tony fanarts:   
> https://www.deviantart.com/obiwan060/art/Tony-kins-151982487

The Iron Horse Garage, Greenwich Village NYC, 1970.  
   
  
Tony unzipped his grease-stained blue coveralls, and stepped out of them.   
He walked up to the neon glow of the red and yellow jukebox against the back wall in just his boxers, and pressed ‘F-11-PLAY’ on the selector keypad.  
Drums marked time intangibly for four quick beats, then crashed into a hard, steady rhythm with the guitar.  The chords cut backwards and forwards through the vocalist’s wordless intro cry, reverberating off the cluttered garage walls.  
‘COINS-I’, Tony typed.  
Another cry, ripped up and framed by the steady, rough edged guitar.  
He hit ‘I-PLAY’, and stepped back.  
The actual lyrics to Led Zeppelin’s  _‘Immigrant Song’_  began, and the red and yellow jukebox’s gleaming face separated into three pieces.  The half-circle at the top pivoted upwards, and the bottom halves swung apart sideways.  
Smiling, Tony reached inside for his armor.  
  
-  
   
The Iron Horse Garage, 1:45 PM.  
  
   
“Okay, I’ll ask it,”  Peter said, eyeing the string of red plastic disks that hung suspended from the garage ceiling like a bizarre clothesline, “-what’s with all the hole-punched Frisbees?”  
  
“That’s how many repulsor disks I’ve gone through,” Tony replied, without looking up from the paperwork strewn across his battered brown desk.  
  
“Really?  Are those easy to make?”  Peter asked, eagerly.  
  
“PETER, for fuck’s sake, I’m busy.  Go  _away_ ,” Tony entreated.  
  
“Why are there so many entries in red?”  
  
“Go away before I squash you!”  Tony snarled.  
  
“Oh, that’s original,” Peter muttered, reading over Tony’s shoulder anyway.    
  
Tony took the ensuing silence for the blessing it was, and ignored him.  
After a minute, Peter frowned, and picked up two of the invoices.  
  
“HEY-!”  Tony objected, grabbing for them.  
  
Peter evaded him by clinging to the ceiling, and laid the papers back down on the desk a moment later, one partially overlapping the other.  He pointed out two numbers, one on the page dated in February, and the other on the page dated in April.  The invoices were otherwise identical, but the numbers didn’t match.  Some clever soul at the motorcycle parts company had made a slight ‘error’ with the decimal point in April, turning an eleven into one hundred and ten.  Tony’s eyes flicked quickly from one page to the other.    
  
“You’re hired,” Tony said, flatly.  
  
“I’m in high school,” Peter pointed out, “-and from the looks of these I doubt you could pay me right now anyway.”  
  
“I’ll make you breakfast,” Tony offered.  
  
“That’s not some weird double-entendre, is it?  Because if it is-” Peter began, reddening.  
  
“Heh.  -No,” Tony laughed, “-you look way too much like I did ten years ago.”  
  
“Why does that not make me feel better?…”  Peter muttered, under his breath.  
  
“Look, this isn’t complicated,” Tony grinned, “-you sort out my books until I can make enough of a profit on this place that I can pay you.  Until then, I’ll make you breakfast.”  
  
Peter hesitated.    
He could tell Tony was using the word ‘books’ loosely, and that this was going to be one HELL of an undertaking.  He was good with math, but catching the decimal point had been a fluke, a lucky break…  Then again, if he COULD turn this place around, a little extra cash would help out aunt May a lot, and his superpowers -did- take an unreasonable amount of food to maintain…  
  
“I’ll do it,” Peter agreed.  
  
Tony clapped him on the back cheerfully, shuffled the coffee-stained papers together into a rough stack, and slapped them into Peter’s hands.  
  
“Best of luck, Pete.”  
   
-  
   
Dimly-lit warehouse, NYC, 7:20 PM, 1971.  
   
  
“-Sure you will.”  
  
Iron Man’s repulsor ray hit Unicorn dead center, and knocked him back into a stack of empty blue barrels.  A laser blast passed smoking through one ricocheting barrel, and shattered the warehouse windows above Iron Man’s head, bathing him in flying glass.  
  
On the other side of the warehouse, Spider Man was muttering expressions his aunt would have frowned upon, and tearing at the twisted cords of webbing that the Whirlwind had blown him back into with his fingers.  Good thing the quick-whirling thug had a fondness for monologueing, or he could have gotten clean away by now…  
A thought struck Spider Man, and he snagged one of the scattering blue barrels with a web-line.  He swung it wide, aiming towards but not -at- his opponent.  Whirlwind took the bait, and spun easily out of range… right into Spider Man’s second web line.  The crook rolled up the line fast-  _-too_  fast, leaving the ground with a startled yell on sheer momentum and wrapping himself up the web-line like a yo-yo on a string.  Spider Man managed to release the web in time to avoid being wrapped up WITH his opponent, but the hurtling man collided with him in mid-air, knocking both of them to the floor.  
   
Iron Man, meanwhile, had just duct-taped a small side-view mirror from the crooks’ getaway truck snugly to the front of Unicorn’s forehead-laser.  He kept a heavy armored boot on Unicorn’s chest, and looked up to see how Spider Man was doing.  
Peter was standing on one foot beside an angrily wobbling blue barrel, and pulling thickly-wrapped strands of sticky webbing off his right foot with annoyance.  
Iron Man smirked behind his faceplate, and finished duct-taping Unicorn’s hands and feet together.  His helmet radio crackled to life.  
  
“Crrrcrrrkck- -on Man, come in?”  
  
“Iron Man here.  What’s up, Powers?”  Tony replied, pressing a flat button on the side of his helmet.  
  
“The Avengers found Captain America,” Luke told him.  
  
“Oh, god…”  Tony sighed, shutting his eyes, “-I didn’t even know he’d gotten loose.”  
  
“No, man.  You ain’t hearing me,” Luke cut across Tony’s darkening thoughts, “-the Avengers found  _Cap_.  The REAL deal.  -Alive.”  
  
Tony was silent.  
  
“Are they  _sure_?”  He asked, after a moment.  
  
“Yeah, Mister Fantastic just finished checkin’ ‘im out,” Luke confirmed, “-s’all over the news.  I gotta go, man…”  
  
“Right.  -Thank you.”  Tony replied, automatically.  
  
He let his finger off the button, and just… stood for a moment.    
Tony remembered the Captain America poster he’d had on his wall as a kid.    
He remembered the first time some scum-sucker in SpecOps command had thought it would be a good idea to defrost the 1950’s ersatz Captain America.    
He remembered the battle that followed- -one of his earliest as Iron Man- -and the hate and confusion in the eyes of a drug-poisoned schoolteacher when he had finally taken the madman down.    
…Tony still had nightmares about that one.  
He remembered doing a history report in college before he’d ever dreamed of the armor, and thinking that Cap, Union Jack, and the Invaders seemed to belong to an age different than the history moving around them.  …The time of King Arthur’s round table, perhaps.  
Tony knew that whether the man the Avengers had found had been the real Captain America or not, the government was probably already re-writing him.  
It was a tragedy, and a waste, and a corruption of-  
  
“Hey- -hey, Iron Man?”  Spider Man broke in, loping up to him.  
  
“Yeah Spider, what is it?”  Tony answered, absently.  
  
“Power Man called,” Peter tapped his Spider-comm, “They just found the original Captain America.  …Wouldn’t he be really old by now?”  
  
“Fifties, maybe.  I- -I don’t know,” Tony replied, somewhat distantly.  
  
“Why do you think he never came forward before?”  Peter pressed.  “-Do you think he still has his Super-Soldier powers, or would that have-“  
  
“Spider, your barrel’s trying to roll away.”  
  
“HEY!”  Spider Man pinned the barrel holding the Whirlwind to the warehouse floor with a web-net.  
  
“Wait, did you just say dey found Captain America?”  Unicorn asked, from the floor.  
  
“Yeah, so when you go off to jail this time, you might want to think about a career change,” Spider Man advised him.  
  
Unicorn’s only response was a defeated sigh, but Tony’s brow furrowed slightly.  
Something was happening here.  Something big.  He could feel it coming like he’d felt the long shadow of the Cuban missile crisis…   
…Only this time it felt more like the rising sun.  
   
-  
   
Disused railway yard on the outskirts of NYC, 3:30 PM  
  
   
Iron Man wasn’t getting up.    
The rest of the battle had moved elsewhere, fortunately…  
Steve’s stride broke into a run, and he reached the fallen figure in seconds.  He’d been right, Iron Man wasn’t a robot.  Somewhere inside that suit of armor- -a red and gold affair that would have done Flash Gordon proud- -there was a living man.  From the sound of his breathing there might not be for very much longer, unless…  
  
“Iron Man?  Can you hear me?!”  Steve demanded, shaking him by the shoulder.  
  
No voice emerged, but one of the red-gauntleted hands seemed to be trying to pry open the armor’s breastplate.  There was no visible catch though, and it was locked fast.  
Something about the breastplate’s shape reminded Steve of…  
He couldn’t put his finger on what -exactly-, but he reached down on instinct, pressed in a hidden catch beneath the breastplate’s left side seam, and pulled it forward.  
The armor plate unlocked and swung open on its left-hand hinge… just like the hood of his old friend Arnie’s father’s car.  
  
Steve allowed himself a small smile, looked down into the interior of the suit and- stopped.  The inner side of the breastplate looked nothing like the plain welded and painted steel of the exterior.  It was a carpet of circuits, insulation, power busses, transistors, and things Steve couldn’t -begin- to guess at the function of…  
But that wasn’t what stopped him.  Set into the center of Iron Man’s otherwise very Human-looking chest like the lens of a large magnifying glass, was a device like Steve had never seen before.    
It looked as though a thunderstorm had been captured in a shallow, steel-bound glass jar, and implanted in him.  The lightning within was flickering powerfully but sporadically, and the device was clearly malfunctioning in some way…    
Was it a battery?  An engine?    
Never mind.  
He had to get that thing working again, or Iron Man was dead.  
  
  
  
“-Cap…?”  Iron Man managed, when he finished coughing.  
  
“You’re all right now,” Steve smiled, helping his still-unsteady ally sit up in the unpowered suit of armor.    
Color was returning to Iron Man’s sharp-lined face beneath its layer of five o’clock shadow, and the blackness of his damp hair and Errol Flynn mustache was beginning to stand out less unnaturally.  
Iron Man frowned for a moment, then glanced down at the brightly glowing device in his chest, and started violently.  He -stared- at it, and half-raised one hand.  
  
“Sustained reaction…” he breathed, “-but… that’s impossible, it would take over fifty thou-” Iron Man grabbed the front of Steve’s scale-mail shirt by the star.  “-What did you just shock me with?!”  
  
“Those,” Cap pointed to two loose ends of heavy cable ripped out of the gray metal box on a nearby railway signal light post.  
  
Tony saw the cables, and then noticed that the markings on the pulled cables and the signal-light cables didn’t match, though both -were- black.  His eyes followed the pipe housing the main electrical bundle down the tracks, and fixed on a small gray building off to one side marked with a ‘Danger: high voltage’ sign.  
Tony turned back to Cap with a look that made Steve wonder if he was about to get punched in the face.    
Then he yanked down on Steve’s shirt a few more inches, and kissed him deeply.  
  
“-Thanks,” Tony sighed happily, some four or five startled seconds later.  
  
“Weh… I…  …You’re all right now,” Steve repeated, as if that made sense.  His face was probably close to the color of Iron Man’s -breastplate-…  
  
Power Man and Iron Fist arrived at a dead run.  
  
“Is he all right?”  Danny asked, relaxing after he saw Iron Man look up.  
  
Neither of the other two seemed to be surprised by the sight of Iron Man’s unmasked face, Cap noticed, so it was a good bet the three of them had worked together before.  
Iron Man looked up at Steve again, and for a staring second Steve wondered if he was about to be kissed a second time… but Iron Man made no move.  
  
“I’m good,” he smiled instead.  
  
“…Heah we go again…”  Luke muttered, just loud enough for Steve’s Super-Soldier hearing to catch.  
   
-  
   
Matt Murdock’s apartment, Hell’s Kitchen NYC, 10:10 PM.  
   
  
_“-Return you to the madmen of metal, broadcasting live here tonight from Madison Square Gardennnn… BLACK SABBATH!!!!!”_  
  
Matt Murdock pulled on the red leather gloves of his Daredevil costume, and listened approvingly to an intro that sounded like the awakening growl of a robot that could stomp Tokyo.  
_  
“–I am Iron Man!”_  
  
Matt -stopped-, and turned to face the radio.  
  
_“-Has he- -lost his mind-?”_  
  
‘He will when he hears this…’  Matt thought, to himself.  
  
_“-Can he see or is he blind?  Can he- -walk at all?  Or if he moves will he fall-?”_  
  
‘That depends on a lot of factors,’ Matt thought, smirking as he pulled on his mask.  
  
_“Is he- -alive or dead?   Has he thoughts within his head?  We’ll just- -pass him there  Why should we even care?-”_  
  
‘Because somebody has to…’  Matt thought, frowning a little.  
  
The song played on, taking darker and darker turns until ‘Iron Man’ became the villain.  It was too bad, Matt reflected.  Tony liked heavy metal, and he was probably listening.  With his hand on the door, Matt’s enhanced hearing caught something else the band’s microphones were picking up that wasn’t -quite static.  
Bootjets.  
Tony was THERE, at the concert, AS Iron Man.  
…Sweet Jesus.  
The faint rushing noise grew louder, and over the last few chords of the song, a sudden primal roar went up from the crowd.  Matt swallowed.  The DJ swore on-air.  
  
_“–I have GOT to be going out o’ my fucking mind!  Do yew people see this?  Are yew fucking seeing this?!”_  Ozzy screamed.  
  
More, and louder screaming, though less outright terrified now.  A heavy clang, and the bootjets cut out.  
  
_“Speak of the devil and he shall appear…”_   Ozzy said,  _“-I haven’t pissed you off then, ‘ave I?”_  
  
_“Whatever gave you that idea?”_  Iron man asked, over an ominous crackle of electricity.    
  
The crowd screamed again.  
  
_“…Easy-”_ Ozzy began, not quite into the microphone.  
  
The crackling shut off.  
  
_“Just kidding, man.  You guys kicked -BLEEP-,”_  Iron Man laughed.  
  
“You son of a bitch,” Matt said, with a sigh of relief.  
  
_“So you’re not ‘ere to blow us away?  Are you quite sure about that?   -Because you owe me one pair of trousers already, you -BLEEEEP-.”_  
  
_“Yeah, I’m sure- -IF we can come to some arrangement about you taking my name in vain back there…”_   Iron Man qualified.  
  
_“What did you ‘ave in mind?”_   Ozzy asked,  _“-because if it’s my soul you’re after, that’s otherwise engaged.”_  
  
There was an upsurge of laughter and approving cat-calls from the crowd.  
_  
“Well, let’s start with your John Hancock on this,”_  Iron Man said.  
  
_“Ab-so-lutely.”_ …A permanent marker squeaked over what sounded like a small plate of Iron Man’s armor.   _“-You know, you’re not ‘alf bad when you’re not out knocking down buildings…”_  
  
_“That’d be less of a problem if the bad guys stopped trying to knock me INTO buildings,”_  Iron Man pointed out, dryly.  
  
_“-Then why don’t you leave ‘em alone, you establishment PIG?”_  Somebody yelled, from the audience.  
_  
“You got something to say to me?”_   Iron Man challenged,  _“-sound off again punk, loud and proud!”_  
  
_“You’re a joke, Iron Man!  An’ any joker could win a street-fight in a suit of super-powered armor!  Who are you to judge?  You don’t know what real combat MEANS!”_  
_  
“Vietnam, right?”_   Iron Man guessed, calmly.  
  
_“Yeah man, I was THERE!”_  the heckler yelled back, angrily.  
  
_“-So was I,”_  Iron Man cut him off.  
  
There was a beat or two of dead air, with only the soft crackle of microphone static.  
  
_“…Is that suit Army?”_   The heckler asked, mollified but still wary.  
_  
“Yeah!  Where was my -BLEEP- battle suit?”_   Someone else in the audience demanded.  
  
_“I didn’t get this from Uncle Sam,”_  Iron Man assured him, _“-but about what you said earlier,”_ he began, raising his voice,  _“-you asked me ‘why don’t I leave ‘em alone?’”  
  
“-Yeah!”_  
  
_“I can’t do that because I’m NOT -BLEEP- blind!”_  Iron Man shouted back.  
  
“Oh, -thanks-…”  Matt muttered philosophically.  
  
_“-When I see a bunch of super-powered -thugs- tearing a strip offa my city while your ‘establishment’s’ BACK is turned, it just kinda pisses me OFF!”_  Iron Man snarled,  _“-you can’t just ignore -BLEEP- like that, that’s how it gets bad!  WE can do BETTER than that!  We’ve got to!”_  
  
This got an answering cheer of approval, though it was by no means universal.  
  
_“…An’ besides, the day I need a reason to get inta THIS suit an’ fly, somebody better -BLEEP- bury me, because I will be a -BLEEP- flatliner!”_  Iron Man declared with what sounded like a grin, and the unibeam on his armor crackled momentarily without firing.  
  
A -much- better cheer greeted that one.  
  
_“Now shut up and let this crazy man sing…”_ Iron Man ordered.    
  
There was a slight squelch of static, and a metallic clink from one of Ozzy’s rings as he took the mic back.  
  
_“Thank you, thank you… all right, so I may have gotten a few o’ the details wrong, but don’t fly off and trash the place!-  -Now this next one is one yew all may recognize, and if you don’t then -BLEEP- you anyway…”_  
  
Matt smirked and left to go on patrol, leaving the radio playing.  
   
-  
   
The Iron Horse Garage, 12:25 PM (next day).  
   
  
“AH-!  Friggin’christ!”  
  
Tony put a hand to the bass-beat of pain in his forehead, and bent down to pick up the Ford wrench he’d just dropped.  
At least Peter wouldn’t be coming in today…  
Goddamn sun, and dawn’s early light in general.    
Okay, so it was actually half past noon, but…  at… at what -point- in history had people decided to do business in the daytime?  Seriously…  It was outmoded.  Antediluvian.  Should have gone out with corsets and Thomas Edison.  Actually, corsets could stay.  But daytime operation was ridiculous…  Even computers thought better in the cool of night, so why wouldn’t a-  
  
“Anybody home?”  A vaguely familiar voice called from the open garage door.  
  
Tony’s head came up, and struck the underside of a classic truck’s hood with completely unnecessary force.  
  
“OW!!!- -god… hangonasecond…”  Tony staggered back a step, and held onto the corner of the engine compartment with one white-knuckled hand until he could open his eyes again.  
  
His sunglasses had fallen off, and he was looking straight into the clear blue eyes of Captain America for the second time.  And they really -were- blue, like the sky at forty thousand feet, while his…  
Tony didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.    
He swallowed slightly, instead.  
  
“Hi again,” Tony said, and instantly started fishing for his lost sunglasses under the truck’s radiator.    
  
Cap, like Tony, was in civvies today.  He wore nondescript blue jeans, brown steel toed boots, a butter yellow button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a blindingly white t-shirt underneath it.  Over one arm, he carried a brown leather bomber jacket with an eagle on the back.  Cap looked fantastic, but how he’d gotten out the door of the Avengers’ mansion looking like a refugee of the early fifties without Janet Van Dyne waylaying him for his own good, Tony had no idea.  
  
“Are you all right?”  Cap asked.  
  
“Yeah, I-” -sunglasses,  _finally_ \- “-I just hit the um… …what can I do for you?”  Tony asked, slipping his sunglasses back on.  
  
“…I was wondering if you’d take a look at my motorbike,” Cap replied still eyeing him with concern.  
  
Huh, thought Tony,  -Captain America- was the one who actually brought his motorbike in.    
That figured, in a weird, karmic-debt sort of way…  
  
“Sure thing.  What’s wrong with it?”  Tony asked, straightening and wiping his hands on the thighs of his green coveralls.  
  
“Well, I just got it, and I’m not sure the adjustment on the clutch is right,” Cap said aloud, but passed Tony a handwritten note with a significant look.   _‘Sweep for radio-transmitter’_ , the note said.  
  
“-I can take care of that.  Bring it on inside,” Tony nodded knowingly, stuffing the note in his pocket.  Steve did so, and Tony pulled the rolling garage door down.  
  
   
The bike was beautiful, of course.  
An early-model Harley-Davidson Panhead with a gas tank the same shade as the blue on Cap’s shield, and fittings of untouched, glowing chrome.    
Tony took out the tools he would have needed for a clutch adjustment to make the performance sound better, and grabbed a pencil from the coffee can by the phone.  
  
_‘Blew it with the ‘hi again’.  What do I call you out of costume?’_  Tony wrote, and handed the paper and pencil over.  He crossed the room, took a medium-sized wooden box out of a metal parts cabinet, and unpacked it on the floor beside the Harley, revealing several horrifically complex-looking electronic scanners.  
  
Cap handed him the notepaper and pencil back.  
  
_‘I’m Steve Rogers’_ , the note said.  
  
Tony started to write his own name in return, but the pencil lead broke about halfway up the exposed point, so the lines of  _‘Tony Stark’_ looked a lot darker and choppier.  
  
Steve underlined _‘Tony’_ , and gave him an inquiring look.  
  
Tony nodded approvingly, and wrote back,  _‘play with my tools while I do this’_.  
  
Steve smiled, amused, but nodded shrewdly.    
-Of course.  The man had been trained in counter-espionage, after all…  
  
Tony began his scans.    
  
Steve put his jacket down, found a clean red rag in a bin by the small pneumatic air compressor, and started wiping down the tools in Tony’s big red roll-around toolbox.    
Tony frowned slightly at the LCD screen of the device in his hand.  He hadn’t meant  _those_  tools.  They were already cleaned and oiled anyway…  
  
“It’s good to see you again,” Steve said.  
  
Tony looked up, smiled, and went back to his scan.  
  
“You too, Steve.”  
  
“That wasn’t the sort of party where you stop to chat, but I’d meant to ask you earlier- -what’s that device you have…?”  Steve drew a circle in the air in front of his own chest.  
  
“Oh, this-?”  Tony glanced down the front of his nominally white A-line, and tapped the scratched black cover that hid his arc reactor from public view.  “-It’s a battery for my pacemaker.  I took some shrapnel in ‘Nam, and this keeps my heart beating unless I forget to charge it,” he joked.  
  
Steve gave him a doubtful look.  
  
Tony shrugged, and then nodded that yes, he was serious.  
He’d also found the first of the bugs on the bike already, snugged up under the frame itself just beneath the Harley’s gas tank.  -It had been hard to pin down because it was using the entire frame as a transmitter.  
Tony motioned Steve over, and pointed.    
Steve felt around carefully under the tank where Tony was pointing, then nodded silently.    
Tony pantomimed ripping something out of the bike.    
Steve shook his head, and made a ‘sit tight’ downwards motion with one hand.    
Tony nodded, and continued his sweep.    
  
Steve stood, and examined some of the eclectic clutter on the garage walls.  
He saw assorted hubcaps, hanging coils of thick copper electrical wire, a framed poster of a B-24 bomber in flight, a perfect steel gear the size of a dinner-plate, and several mechanical parts that didn’t seem to go to -anything-.  There was a classic hot-rod calendar, heavily annotated in black permanent marker… one scrawl, written sideways on the picture and carefully avoiding the pinup-car itself, looked like some form of complex mathematical notation.    
  
The thing that held Steve’s eye though, was a snapshot of Tony himself, standing with his copilot and a handful of other soldiers by the open door of a green helicopter.    
  
“You were a Captain,” Steve observed, looking back over his shoulder with a wry grin.  
  
“Yeah, I was,” Tony replied, with an ‘eat-shit-and-die’ one.  
  
“-Only made it to PFC, myself,” Steve said, turning back towards the picture.  
  
Tony snapped his fingers.    
Steve turned around.    
Tony pointed back towards the toolbox, and made a ‘get rolling’ motion with one hand.  
  
“So I guess that means you outrank me,” Steve said with a grin, picking up where he’d left off on his tool-cleaning.  
  
Tony snorted, but smiled, looking back down at his scanner.  Something wasn’t adding up.  He had isolated the bug on the bike and filtered that frequency out, but the scanner was still picking up a signal from somewhe-  
Oh for god’s sake…  they DIDN’T…  
Tony got up, and paced around the garage floor backwards and forwards for a moment, eyes fixed on the screen of the gray scanner in his outstretched hand, as if he was dancing with it.  Forward… back… over… …-there-.  
  
Tony walked up to Steve, and stopped.  He passed the scanner through the air in front of Steve’s body slowly, glaring at the readout in ferocious triumph when the indicator light on the device’s side switched from yellow to red.    
Steve blinked, clearly disturbed.  
Tony moved Steve’s arms up by his wrists, and scanned him again.  He stopped just beneath Steve’s left arm, and pointed.    
Steve’s face hardened in a way Tony -never- wanted to see directed at him, and Steve took off both of his civilian shirts.  Underneath was a glittering expanse of blue scale-mail, with Cap’s white star displayed proudly in the center.  Steve shrugged out of the leather straps of his shield, and set the large disk down against the toolbox beside him.  
  
Tony tightened his scan, and began searching under individual scales one by one, like a small animal searching under the leaves of a plant for insects.  
Four scales up from the lower edge of Steve’s armor and along the seam of the blue leather underneath, Tony found his bug.  He lifted the scale up and held it there with one forefinger, showing Steve the tiny transmitter hidden in a groove on the underside.  
Steve stared at it for a long moment, then nodded.  Tony turned back to his scanner, programmed it to filter out the second signal, and gave Steve a thumbs-up.  
Aside from what they’d already found, Steve and his motorcycle were clean.  
   
Tony left Steve to finish putting himself back together, and returned to the Harley.  
He tapped twice on the clutch with a black-handled screwdriver.  
  
“Yeah, I think that should do it,” he said, “-just go easy until you finish breaking it in.”  
  
“Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, in a tone that was just a shade too sincere for a man simply talking to his mechanic.    
  
Tony began putting his scanning equipment back in its box.  
  
“Do you want a beer?”  He asked, without looking up.  
  
“…Yeah, I think I could use one,” Steve admitted, tucking his shirt back into his jeans.  
  
”Me too.  They’re in that fridge over by the drill-press,” Tony said, indicating the appropriate direction with a nod.  
  
“What’s the other refrigerator for?”  Steve couldn’t help asking.  
  
“It’s a freezer,” Tony replied, without really explaining anything.  
  
Steve took out two beer bottles, and handed Tony one of them.  Tony popped the cap off with a practiced twist, drank, and set the bottle down on the concrete floor while he finished putting the rest of his tools away.  
  
-When his headache had begun to fade he wasn’t sure, but it was almost gone now.  
  
   
“You know, I only know one song on this entire list,” Steve said, from over by the jukebox.    
  
“Sinatra, right?”  Tony called over.  
  
“Uh-huh,” Steve replied, still studying the other titles.  
  
“-He’s the kind that lasts,” Tony shrugged, shutting his toolbox.  
  
“Did all these records come with the jukebox when you bought it?”  Steve asked.  
  
“No, most of the bands weren’t even around when I got this,” Tony said, patting one of the jukebox’s polished fairings.  
  
“May I?”  
  
“Go ahead.”  
  
“Where do I start?”  
  
“Anywhere you want, but mothers have been chucking out most of these records for decades,” Tony promised.  
  
“I’ll start at the end, then,” Steve decided, and pressed ‘G-12-PLAY’.  
  
At first he wasn’t sure the record was being played at all, because it started with a soft, regular mechanical noise, almost like the very faint beat of a helicopter blade.  Then a slow ripple of cymbals, and a clear, meditative guitar began.  Hide-headed drums, like he’d heard in North Africa while countering one of Rommel’s agents…  
  _  
‘This is the end  
Beautiful friend  
This is the end  
My only friend, the end-‘_  
   
It was haunting.  Half-foreign music with American-accented words, and suddenly Steve’s mind was churning, throwing him back to the last moment he’d seen Bucky before his grip on the plane slipped, the way rising panic had swamped the courage and irrational trust in the boy’s eyes at the last-  
_  
‘Of our elaborate plans, the end  
Of everything that stands, the end  
No safety or surprise, the end  
I’ll never look into your eyes…again’_  
   
…Good grief.  How had things gotten this bad?  How could the chilling, hopeless feeling that had swamped his heart at that fatal moment he’d let go… have become a modern pop song?  
  _  
‘Can you picture what will be  
So limitless and free  
Desperately in need…of some…stranger’s hand  
In a…desperate land’_  
   
The song played on, but the lyrics became confusing, and Steve couldn’t re-engage with it.  When the music trailed off into a montage of crickets, night-birds and distant sirens, Steve looked over at Tony, who was watching his face with concern.  
  
“You done with this one?”  Tony asked.  
  
“I- -yes.”  
  
“Good.  Try this one,” Tony said, and pressed 'B-3-PLAY’.  Quickly.  
  
Elvis’s  _‘Rock a Hula Baby’_  started.  
  
That got a smile from Steve, as Tony had intended it to.  -There were very few people who couldn’t at least laugh at B-3.  
Tony listened too, watching Steve’s reaction with satisfaction, and moving slightly with the music.  
_  
‘Although I love to kiss my little hula miss   
I never get the chance   
I wanna hold her tight all through the night   
But all she wants to do is dance-’_  
   
Okay, -that- part was unfortunate, Tony reflected, though strangely apropos considering…  
The song finished.  Tony took a pull on his beer.  
  
“I like that one,” Steve decided, smiling a little.  
  
“Me too,” Tony smiled back.  
  
“What was the first one about?”  Steve asked.  
  
Tony chewed on his lower lip for a moment, considering.  
  
“War and sex,” he decided.  
  
Steve looked at him thoughtfully.  
  
“You’re not going to lie to me at all, are you?”  
  
“-What?”  Tony blinked.  
  
“I’ve been getting the runaround from a lot of people lately,” Steve said, casting a disapproving glance at his bugged motorcycle, “-and you just gave me a straight answer.”  
  
_Define straight,_  Tony thought self-consciously.  
  
“Do you want me to stop?”  He asked, aloud.  
  
“No.  Tell me about Vietnam.  I’ve never really understood that conflict.”  
  
“‘Conflict’, huh?”  Tony said, dryly.  “-It’s… basically a pissing match with the Red Chinese that got away from us, though you’d never guess that from what the newspapers print.  Here, just- -listen.”  Tony pressed ’D-1-PLAY’.  
_  
‘I got a letter from LBJ  
It said this is your lucky day   
It’s time to put your khaki trousers on  
Though it may seem very queer  
We’ve got no job to give you here  
So we are sending you to Vietnam…  
Lynden Johnson told the nation   
Have no fear of escalation   
I am trying everyone to please  
Though it isn’t really war   
We’re sending fifty thousand more   
To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese…’_  
   
‘Lynden Johnson Told the Nation’ played through, and Steve listened with mounting consternation.  
  
“But- -That doesn’t make any sense-!” he protested, when it was over.  
  
“-Now-,” Tony tilted his beer bottle in the direction of his guest, “-you’re getting it.”  
  
Steve was magnificent, angry.  
He got up, and paced a few turns.  He killed half his beer in one shot without seeming to notice, and held the neck of the bottle between his first and second fingers, forgotten.  
  
Tony finished his beer, and pressed 'F-2-PLAY’.  
  
Zeppelin’s  _‘The Battle of Evermore’_  began.  
  
The melody was strange, almost like folk music, and it seemed more of a framework to hang the lyrics -on- than an accompaniment…  But the words began to tell a story of heroes, and after the first few lines, Steve was listening.  
It was strange.  Both songs had been about war, yet he was hopeful this one would end differently.  Less fashionably, by having the good guys win.  
A hero, who walked in shadow.  A great war, and troops called up.  The angels of Avalon- -why did that make him think of Spitfire?  A tyrant, whose face was red.  -Boy, did that strike home…  
And it seemed to be-  _-was-_  -about heroes, some of whom could fly.  
  
“That was recent, wasn’t it?”  Steve guessed when the song finished.  
  
“Yes, it was,” Tony replied, pleased at the deduction.  
  
“By ring-wraiths, were they talking about the Mandarin’s henchmen?”  Steve asked.  
  
“W- not that I know of.  Most of the imagery is from a fantasy novel.  …I just wanted to play you something where the good guys didn’t get screwed,” Tony grinned.  
  
“A fantasy novel?” Steve asked, interested.  
  
“ _‘The Lord of the Rings’_.  -It’s a trilogy, actually.  I’ve got the first two books around here somewhere…”  Tony began.

-


	2. Chapter 2

-

Tony’s apartment above the Iron Horse Garage, 6:46 AM.  
  
  
“Tony, are you up?”  Peter called up the stairs.  
  
“…Who’s that?”  Whitney asked, sleepily.  
  
Tony pressed a hand to his face, and grinned ruefully behind it.  
  
“That’s Peter, he works for me.”  
  
“Well get  _rid_  of him…”  Whitney said, pointedly.  
  
“Nope,” Tony swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and ran a hand through his hair.  
  
“You said you’d make me breakfast,” Whitney reminded him sulkily, “-not start work at seven in the morning…”  
  
“And so I will,”  Tony promised,  “-but I can’t have a gorgeous lady in a golden mask wandering out in her birthday suit, or Peter’ll want one too.”  
  
He kissed the back of her hand.  
  
“You’re an ass,” Whitney smirked, or at least Tony thought it sounded that way.  
  
“Maybe, but you just got upgraded to breakfast in bed,” Tony pointed out, picking up his red bathrobe.  
  
Whitney draped herself artfully onto Tony’s half of the bed in a way that arguably counted as payback, and waggled her fingers at him.  
  
  
“Whoa!”  
  
Tony nearly collided with Peter just outside the bedroom door.  He pulled the door mostly shut with a quick jerk, grabbed Peter by the shoulder, and marched him backwards into the kitchen.  
  
“Peter my boy, if you keep walking in on me up here, you are gonna get a nasty surprise one of these days…” he said, tersely.  
  
Peter’s eyes widened and he looked from Tony to the door.  
  
“Holy cats-!”  He gulped, “-Sorry, boss.”  
  
Tony lowered his voice to a murmur, and added,  
“I have a guest, you -will- be polite to her, and you don’t know -shit- about the hero game.”  
  
“Gotcha,” Peter nodded.  
  
“Siddown,” Tony let go of him, and got a skillet out of the dish-drainer.  
  
Peter sat.  
  
“-So I was thinking of doing my history paper on the biker gangs of the fifties- you know, because we’ve got some customers who were around for that, and we could ask to them-”  Peter began, without preamble.  
  
“What’s this ‘we’ Kemosabe?”  Tony interrupted, cracking some eggs into a bowl.  
  
“Okay, -I- could ask them what it was really like back then, and maybe get some pictures of their patches.”  
  
“Ton-y?  What are you making me-?”  Whitney called playfully from the bed.    
  
“Scrambled eggs Casablanca,” Tony called back over his shoulder enigmatically.  
  
“What’s that?”  Peter asked.  
  
“You’ll see,” Tony promised.  
  
“Hi, Peter-!”  Whitney called, incorrigible.  
  
Peter flushed.  
  
“Hello, ahh… ma’am?”  
  
“-I’m Whitney.  Nice to meet you.”  
  
“Um.  Heh.  Likewise… I think…”  Peter replied, sheepishly.  “…Oh god.  She’s naked.  She is, isn’t she?”  Peter said to himself, under his breath.  
  
“Pretty much,” Tony smirked, without turning around.  
  
“…I said that out loud?”  Peter squeaked.  
  
“Tony said you worked for him, Peter-” Whitney unwittingly interrupted them, “-what is it that you do?”  
  
“He’s my assistant,” Tony called back.  
  
“I’m his accountant,” Peter replied, at exactly the same time.  
  
Whitney laughed, and it made both of the guys smile.  Women were like that, sometimes.  Just… great ambiance.  
A different and spicier kind of ambiance began to fill the air as Tony added his egg-turmeric mixture to what was already frying.  
The experiment was a success however, and the three of them ate it in two separate rooms, talking loudly back and forth through the slightly-cracked door.    
Peter took the fact that Tony had chosen to eat in the bedroom with Whitney as a hint, and left as soon as he was finished.  
  
  
“Sweet kid,” Whitney observed when they heard the door shut after him, and feet descending the stairs.   
  
“He has his moments,” Tony shrugged.  
  
“Is he yours?”  Whitney asked, fork poised.  
  
“HEY!  Do I look old enough to have a son in high school?”  Tony demanded, trying to sound hurt.  
  
“You are the strangest man I have ever known,” Whitney smiled.  
  
“…That’s a selling point, isn’t it?”  Tony guessed.  
  
“-Except for the part where you won’t make me my armor,” Whitney agreed, dryly.  
  
“War Machine is out of your league, Whit.  Stop asking me that,” Tony said, annoyed.  
  
“I can pay you, you know.”  
  
…Yeah, if you go back to being the head of the  _Maggia_ , Tony thought angrily.  
God, when had things gotten so  _complicated_ …?  
  
“Payment has nothing to do with it,” he said aloud, “-the armor is mine, period.  The only reason War Machine exists at all is because Morgan didn’t respect that.”  
  
“Tony-”  
  
“-And if War Machine never existed, you’d still have a face,” Tony cut her off.  
  
“Tony… that wasn’t your fault,” Whitney told him, looking away and moving the breakfast dishes onto the nightstand.  
  
“Yes it was,” Tony sighed.  
  
“…You made it up to me,” she whispered, touching a control stud on her mask just beneath the shadow of her smooth, black hair.  
  
The mask flickered, and vanished beneath the illusion of another beautiful woman’s face.  
  
“Dammit, the hologram’s still pixelating along your hairline…”  Tony frowned, reaching out for it.  
  
“You can fix it later,” Whitney promised, and pushed him back down onto the bed.  
  
“I can fix it later,”  Tony agreed.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 8:49 PM.  
  
_  
‘Get your motor runnin’  
Head out on the highway  
Lookin’ for adventure  
And whatever comes our way-’_  
  
Tony sprayed down a rag with cleaning solution from an unmarked plastic bottle, and reached back into his gold-painted leg armor.  …This cleaning had  _needed_  doing all week.  
On the table beside him his helmet radio was obligingly tapping into a so-called secure SHIELD frequency, though on the whole, Tony preferred the jukebox’s ‘ _Born to be Wild_ ’.  
_  
‘Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen  
Take the world in a love embrace-’  
  
[…Baker twenty two to Candy Store, all quiet.]  
[Candy Store copies-kshh…]  
  
‘Fire all of your guns at once  
And explode into space-’  
  
[…Kssssh…]  
[..Sshhhh… ..crackle… …kshh…]  
  
‘I like smoke and lightning  
Heavy metal thunder-’  
  
[…Kshh… …report-only APB, code True Blue, contact lost Newark, New Jersey.]  
[…Candy Store copies, will relay… …kshhcrkl…]  
  
‘Racin’ with the wind-’  
_  
…WHAT?  
Tony paused, spray bottle in hand, staring at his helmet.  It had gone back to playing static again, but- -True Blue?  
‘True Blue’ was  _Steve_.  …Steve had gone AWOL?  
_  
‘-And the feelin’ that I’m under  
Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen-’  
_  
Tony grinned.  He jumped up, snatched his helmet off the tabletop, did a few dramatic dance moves with it, and kissed it firmly on the faceplate.  
_  
[…kkshh…. …Baker twenty two to Candy Store… contact subject ‘Blackjack’, thirty-fourth and Wilson…]  
[…kK!… …Copy your contact Baker twenty two, ‘Blackjack’ thirty-fourth and Wilson…]  
_  
“I -knew- you could figure it out,” Tony told his helmet happily, “-I just  _knew_  it!”  
_  
‘-Take the world in a love embrace  
Fire all of your guns at once  
And explode into space  
Like a true nature’s child  
We were born, born to be wild-!’  
_  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:02 AM (next day).  
  
  
The phone rang.  
Tony let it go for three rings, then put down his soldering iron and picked up on the fourth ring.  
  
“Custer, this had better not be you,” he warned.   
  
“Tony?”  A familiar voice said.  
  
“…Steve?”  Tony blinked.  
  
“Good, I was hoping to catch you before you went to bed, or- -I didn’t just wake you up, did I?”  Steve asked, as if the possibility had just occurred to him.    
  
“No, no, uh… what’s up?”  
  
“Nothing that can’t wait.  Can I come over?”  
  
“Wait- you’re still in New York City?”  Tony asked, quickly.  
  
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”  Steve asked, perplexed.  
  
“Never mind.  I’ll be down in the garage.  Just knock.”  
  
About two minutes later, the deep purr of Steve’s motorcycle pulled up to the garage, and stopped.  Tony raised the garage door by hand, and a little light spilled out.  Steve was in civvies again, but not by much.  He’d pushed the cowl of his costume down, and buttoned on a long tan trench coat over everything else so that only the red boots showed.  Tony thought the look screamed ‘secret agent’, but didn’t comment.  
  
“Hi Steve,” he smiled, instead.  
  
“Tony, how are you?”  
  
“Good.  Great.  I was just finishing something up-” he waved vaguely in the direction of the soldering iron on his desk.  
  
“You mind if I-” Steve began, indicating his bike.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, c’mon in, the light’s attracting moths,” Tony said, motioning him forwards impatiently.  
  
Steve rolled his motorcycle into the garage, and Tony pulled the door down after him.  Tony glanced up at a small gray box he’d recently mounted on the garage wall, but the indicator light was still green.  
  
“So,” he said, “I heard you got rid of the bugs.”  
  
“…How…?”  Steve stared, hands pausing on the buttons of his trench coat.  
  
“I have my ways,” Tony shrugged.  
  
“Look me in the eyes,” Steve ordered, suddenly standing -very- tall in front of him.  
  
“Okay…”  Tony did it.  
  
“Tell me you had nothing to do with those bugs, or what happened on 108th street,” Steve instructed.  
  
“No, Steve.  I had nothing to do with those, I swear,” Tony promised.  
_‘…108th street?’_   Tony wondered.  
  
“Okay,” Steve nodded.  He took a step back, and sighed.  “-Sorry about that, but I’m not sure who to trust right now.”  
  
“Cross SHIELD, the Army, and Stark Industries off your list, and go from there,” Tony suggested, dryly.  
  
Steve finished unbuttoning his coat, and managed to look both like a wet dream, and completely miserable.  
  
“Do you want a drink?”  Tony asked.  
  
“I’ll take a Coke, if you have one,” Steve replied, with a slight smile.  
  
“Second shelf down, right beside the opened bottle of Jack,” Tony told him, helpfully.  
  
Steve got out two Cokes, and gave Tony one.    
  
“-Thanks,” Tony motioned him to the cracked green leather couch to one side of the jukebox.    
  
Steve took off his coat and shield, and sat.    
  
“…You do have a refrigerator with food in it somewhere, right?”  Steve asked.  
  
“Yes, it’s upstairs,” Tony laughed, opening his soda.  
  
Steve opened his too, and they drank.  
  
“How did you find me here the first time?”  Tony asked, suddenly.  
  
“Hm-?  Well, Power Man mentioned you ran a bike shop here in the village, or I doubt I would have,” Steve replied, guilelessly.  
  
“I’ll kill him,” Tony said, to himself.  
  
“What?”  Asked Steve, frowning.  
  
“-Nothing.  -Inside joke,” Tony amended, hastily.  
  
Steve looked a little wistful, but didn’t ask.  
Tony drank his Coke in the deepening silence, and started wondering if he should put a song on.  
  
“I’ve decided to take a road trip,” Steve said, instead.  
  
“Where?”  Tony asked.  
  
“…I don’t know yet,” Steve admitted, and some of the tension seemed to lift from around his eyes.  
  
“That’s a terrific way to start,” Tony smiled, and held out his Coke.  Steve tapped his Coke against Tony’s, and they both drank.  
  
“I feel like I’m running away from home,” Steve added- -and then paused, as if surprised at himself.  
  
“Have you ever read anything by Kerouac?”  Tony asked.  
  
“No…”  
  
“Maybe when this is all over, you should.”  
  
“I’ve barely started ‘The Two Towers’, I’m afraid,” Steve smiled.  “-Do you give all your friends books to read like this?”  
  
_“No,”_ Tony realized aloud,  _“-I don’t.”_  
  
“Well, thanks for helping me catch up then,” Steve told him, smiling warmly.  
  
_‘Oh my god I’m falling for him…’_   Thought Tony.  
  
“Listen, this road trip… you wouldn’t be planning to start it tomorrow morning, would you?”  Tony asked.  
  
“Yes, in just a few hours,” Steve replied, like a man who had just woken up from a dream.  
  
“Why don’t you catch a couple hours’ sleep down here, and I’ll wake you up in time for breakfast?”  Tony offered.  
  
“But-”   _‘-I just got here,’_  Steve thought.  Aloud he said, “-weren’t you in the middle of something?”  
  
“I just finished,” Tony lied automatically, then corrected, “-with… what I’m doing on it tonight, I mean.”  
  
“I wasn’t making fun of you, you know,” Steve said.  
  
“What?”  Tony blinked.  
  
“For being well-read.  It’s kind of nice to talk to somebody who is, on something besides science.”  
  
“Oh,” Tony swallowed, “-okay.”  
  
“-I went to art school for a while,” Steve added as a peace offering, “-I dropped out to join the US Army in forty-one.”  
  
“…I was at MIT,” Tony replied carefully, “-I dropped out to manage S-the family business.”   
  
“You father was a mechanic?”  Steve asked, looking around the garage with interest.  
  
“No, he was an electrical engineer,” Tony said, relaxing a little, “-I started this place on my own dime.”  
  
Steve didn’t ask what had happened to ‘the family business’, and Tony didn’t offer to tell him.  
  
“…Art school?  Seriously?”  Tony asked, after a moment’s reflection.  
  
“Yes,” Steve smiled, as if pleased to have surprised him.  
  
“Were you any good?”  Tony asked.  
  
“Oh, I don’t know.  Good enough when I was in practice and it made me happy,” Steve shrugged.  
  
“Show me,” Tony decided, on impulse.  
  
“You want me to draw something for you?”  
  
“Yes.”    
  
Tony got up, fished his drafting notebook and some pencils out of the top drawer of a tan metal filing cabinet, and handed them over.  
  
“What do you want me to draw?”  Steve asked, still amused.  
  
“Surprise me.”  
  
Steve turned the notebook so Tony couldn’t see it, and began sketching.  From time to time he glanced up mischievously, and Tony began to worry that Steve had decided to draw  _him_.  
When he got his notebook back though, Tony saw a pretty little dark-haired hula girl with a few backup-dancing palm trees sketched into the background behind her.  
  
“Sign it,” Tony laughed, tapping a finger in the lower right-hand corner.  
  
“All right,” Steve said, and signed it _‘S. Rogers’_.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s kitchen, 06:40 AM (same day).  
  
  
“-Oh, I know where that is.  L’Institute Polytechnique is there now.  You can get the  _best_  Belgian coffee, right over the border,” Tony was saying.  
  
“No kidding?  Last time I saw it, it was-” another man began.  
  
Peter opened the door, and stopped short.  
  
“Oh-!  -Hello…”  Peter said, awkwardly.  
  
“Good morning,” said Captain America, brightly.    
  
He and Tony were relaxing at the kitchen table drinking coffee, and from the look of the dishes in front of them and the delicious smells that lingered in the room, they’d already  _had_  breakfast.  
  
Peter felt obscurely hurt.  
  
“Cap, this is Peter Parker,” Tony introduced, “Pete, this is-”  
  
“I know who that is,” Peter swallowed.  
  
“Well, since you’ve already seen my face without the cowl you may as well call me Steve,” Steve offered, extending his hand.    
  
His cowl  _was_  pushed down, though he was in full costume otherwise.  
  
“Spider Man,” Peter blurted out, taking Steve’s hand and shaking it happily.  
  
Tony choked slightly on his coffee.  
  
“-Pleased to meet you, sir,” Peter added.  
  
“You too,” Steve smiled, “-and I have a feeling we’ll meet again, but right now I should really be getting on the road.”    
  
“You should have been there an hour ago,” Tony agreed, “-enjoy midtown.”  
  
Steve shot Tony a sidelong look, and both men stood.  
  
“Thank you, Tony.  For everything,” Steve said, looking him in the eyes.  
  
“Any time,” Tony replied, with a slight smile.  
  
“I’ll return your book when I get back into town,” Steve promised, setting his dishes in the sink.  
  
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door…”  Tony quoted, coffee mug in hand.  
  
“-Don’t I know it,” Steve grinned, pulling on his trench coat.  
  
“C’mon downstairs,” Tony said, “-I’ll let you out.”  
  
“It was nice meeting you, Peter,” Steve said, turning.  
  
“Bye Cap- -er- -Steve,” amended Peter.  
  
Steve pulled his cowl up, and followed Tony downstairs into the garage.  
  
“Hm,” Peter drummed his fingers quickly against the countertop, then stopped.  He looked at the dishes in the sink.  He peered curiously into the skillet on the stove, where there was still a hash brown and two fried eggs.    
Peter had never known Tony to make hash browns…  
  
A motorcycle roared to life outside, and faded away into the flow of early morning traffic.  The garage door rattled down, and Tony came back upstairs.  He dropped into his chair at the kitchen table, finished the dregs of his coffee, and sighed distractedly.  
  
“That… did just happen, didn’t it?”  Said Peter, carefully.  
  
“Gee whiz, Spider Man, what do YOU think?”  Tony asked, sarcastically innocent.  
  
“No, seriously,” Peter insisted, “- _Captain America_  just made you breakfast?”  
  
“Yes Peter, he did,” Tony smiled.  
  
“…Why?”  Peter asked.  
  
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Tony said wryly, “-but if you’re hungry, the leftovers are in the skillet…”  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:40 PM.  
  
  
“Captain Stark?”  
  
The corners of Tony’s eyes tightened slightly in annoyance, but he looked up over the seat of the Softtail he was working on.  
“Not anymore.  You are…?”  He prompted, instantly making his visitor feel both rude and unwelcome.  
  
“Agent Sharon Carter, sir.  I’m with SHIELD.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” Tony agreed pleasantly, eyes flicking to the clear plastic ID holder clipped to the pocket of her sharp blue blazer.    
  
He fished a red, greasy rag from the pocket of his coveralls, and began wiping his hands on it.  They weren’t getting perceptibly cleaner.  
  
Sharon’s lovely lips thinned a little.  
  
“I can see you’re a busy man, so I’ll come straight to the point.  Have you worked on anything for Captain America recently?“  
  
Tony actually laughed.  He looked around the empty garage as if Sharon had asked him to produce Cap out of thin air.  
  
“Honey, if I had, how would I know?  The man has a secret identity, same as most of the capes in this city…”  
  
“Cap’s not just another cape.  He’s one of ours, and-“  
  
“Sure about that, are ya?”  Tony smirked, eyebrows slightly raised.  
  
Sharon stopped talking, took out a business card, and handed it to him with forced politeness.  
  
“If you or any of your known vigilante associates should happen to see him, please see that he gets this.”  
  
“I’ll get right on that,” Tony agreed, taking the card.  
  
-  
  
Tony’s kitchen, 1:04 AM.  
  
  
Tony touched a pencil eraser to his lips, and frowned at the precise lines and notation he’d just added in his drafting notebook.  
One of his fingers traced the cutouts in the steel frame of his actual arc reactor without looking down at it.  It was still bright, even now…  
Steve’s incredibly risky jump-start of the arc back at the train yard had produced an arc reaction of unprecedented power and longevity, but the device itself was slightly asymmetrical, which meant that the reaction still wouldn’t truly be a self-sustaining one.    
  
Correcting that asymmetry would mean either re-manufacturing the plasma ionization ring, or creating another one from scratch.  Simple enough.  The real problem lay in switching out the old ring for the new, because he couldn’t disconnect the arc from his chest while it was still in operation without being reduced to a pile of carbon cinders by the resulting electrical discharge.  
  
On the other hand he couldn’t simply let the arc run down until it was safe to disconnect, because the transistorized magnets that kept his heart from failing would run out of power at least forty thousand volts before that happened.  
  
…This was, and always HAD been, the problem with his specialized transistors.  
While they were very good at multiplying the  _potential_  of whatever device he combined them with, the raw voltage they required to make that trick  _work_  was well into the pentouple digits.  
  
Since the arc reactor normally operated around one point five Gigajoules anyway, that wasn’t a pressing issue… but it did mean that nothing he possessed short of the arc itself could power his armor, even if by some miracle the magnets sustaining his heart could be hooked up to a suitably powerful outside source- - _through_  all that goddamned gel that now covered the carefully sealed connectors- -without electrocuting him outright.   
  
As things stood…   
Well, there was no reason the arc reactor would fail within his lifetime, provided he kept the voltage fluctuations down by occasionally connecting it back to an ordinary AC power source, and didn’t draw off enough power at once to drop the reaction within the arc casing below 10,000 volts…   
  
-  
  
New York International airspace, 2,200 feet above sea level.  3:08 PM.  
  
  
The saucer-like craft dodged frantically to avoid Iron Man’s repulsor blasts, and clawed for the upper atmosphere as fast as it’s quantum-engines would go.  Tony was falling behind and he knew it, but there was always a chance that whoever was piloting that thing would make a mistake… he switched to onboard oxygen, and climbed higher.  
  
Higher until the metal of the armor actually began to feel cold wherever it made contact with his bare skin, higher until the scattered thunderheads were left far behind, and the sky became the inside of a deep cobalt-blue bowl.    
Higher until he had to yawn to pop his ears for the third time, and the flying saucer was barely a silver speck in his field of vision.  He was losing speed fast now, until finally…  
  
There.  
Tony floated like a dandelion seed on the last layer of the Earth’s atmosphere that was thick enough for his bootjets to compress for upward flight.    
He felt weightless.  Dizzy.  Drunk.  Invincible.  …A little tingly.  
Tony exhaled within the fragile shell of his helmet, and the cold Plexiglas covering his eye-slits fogged momentarily.  …it was so still up here.  Pristine.  Some people went their whole lives without seeing this…  
  
Tony blinked, and jerked awake a hundred feet lower than he’d been a moment ago, adrenaline flooding his system.  He opened the valve on his oxygen system a little wider, and took deep breaths.    
There was a tiny electric-pink flash in the upper atmosphere, and Tony’s radar beeped negatively to let him know that it had lost the flying saucer entirely.  
…Had that thing just jumped to light speed somehow?  Tony wondered, his eyes widening a little.  Or- -had he just witnessed the opening of a wormhole?  Why a light flash in -that- spectral range, instead of the ripple of a space/time distortion effect?  
Tony almost wished he could call the hostile alien craft back and ask.  
  
Instead he turned in midair, leaning sideways casually until the cushion of compressed air slipped out from beneath his boots and he began to fell Earthwards, accelerating horribly fast.  He began to feel lightheaded again, and shut off the flow of extra oxygen to the tube in his helmet.  Tony broke mach two as he dived, arms stiff and streamlined at his sides. He watched New York resolve itself out into rivers and land, neighborhoods, individual blocks like tiny squares on a circuit board…    
  
When he could pick out Greenwich Village visually, Tony cut back upwards in a huge loop, gravity-braking hard enough to bring tiny black dots swimming into his peripheral vision from the G-forces.  
Mach two… one… and then sound came back in a howling rush.  
  
Tony completed the loop at barely three hundred miles per hour, and did a barrel-roll over the Village just because he could.  
He touched down with a crunch of tarred gravel on the roof of a defunct local nightclub, and walked out to the edge of the roof to people-watch for a while.  Some long-haired kids with an acoustic guitar spotted him from the square below, pointed, and waved.    
Tony waved back, but he stayed where he was.  
  
-  
  
The Baxter Building, 5:25 AM.  
  
  
The far door opened, and Tony looked up sharply.  Sue Richards padded across the room, and offered him a white coffee cup with a circled blue number four on the side.  Tony took it and held it in both hands, but didn’t drink.  
  
“-Thanks,” he said, staring dully down at the rising wisps of steam.  
  
He was still in full armor except for the red and gold helmet sitting on the chair beside him, and his shoulders were slumped in a way Sue had never seen before.  
  
“He hasn’t-” Tony began, looking up at her again.  
  
“No, but Reed said that all traces of the Venom creature are out of Peter’s system now,” Sue assured him, creating an invisible forcefield-couch across from Tony’s chair and sitting down.  “-You did the right thing by bringing him here, Tony.”  
  
“I should have hauled him in days ago,” Tony sighed, running a hand back through his helmet-mussed hair.  
  
“Maybe,” Sue agreed, honestly.  
  
Tony remembered he was holding a cup of coffee, and drank.  
  
-  
  
The Baxter Building 8:28 AM (same day).  
  
  
Peter woke up in a hospital room he’d never seen before.  He wasn’t wearing his mask, and there was a huge bald guy made of orange stone sitting in the too-small chair beside his bed reading a newspaper.  Peter suppressed the urge to jump at least twenty feet in any given direction and stick to a wall.  Ben Grimm’s eyes swiveled downwards, and met his.  Peter blinked.  
  
“Hey… welcome back, kid…”  Ben said kindly, closing his newspaper.  
  
“Did I kill somebody?”  Peter swallowed.  
  
“Not so far as I heard,” Ben replied, frowning a little, “How d’ya feel?”  
  
“…Okay.  A little thirsty and weird.  …How did I get here?”  Peter asked, sitting up on his elbows.  
  
Ben gave Peter a look that Peter didn’t understand at once.  
  
“Ol’ Shellhead brought’cha in.  He’s waitin’ outside, actually,” Ben said, jerking a thumb towards the room’s only door.  
  
“Why outside?”  Peter asked.  
  
“Ahh, that’s between him an’ Reed.  Ya wanna see ‘im?”  
  
Peter nodded.  
  
Ben put his head out the door.  
  
“Hey Tony!  Yer kid’s awake!”  
  
“He’s my student, not my  _kid_ ,” Tony corrected with annoyance, squeezing past Ben into the room with an unscrupulous use of transistor-powered strength that left a long red scratch in the paint on the door.  
  
“YOU,” Tony pointed at Peter as he strode up to the bed.  
  
“Me?”  Peter prompted.  
  
“What day is it?”  Tony demanded.  
  
“Friday?”  Peter guessed.  
  
“WRONG.  It is  _Saturday_ , and I have been chasing your tar-baby ass all over this city since midnight on  _Thursday_.”  
  
“…Thank you?  Peter said, after a pause.  
  
“You’re welcome, Spider.  Now put your clothes back on,” Tony smiled.  
  
“Venom’s gone, right?  It feels like he’s gone…”  Peter began.  
  
“Yeah, Reed fixed that sucker but  _good_ ,” Ben nodded, “-we got ‘im in a jar in the back if ya wanna see…”  
  
“I… Venom was my costume, wasn’t he?”  Peter guessed, uncomfortably.  
  
“’Fraid so, kid.  You ain’t much skinnier’n  butane-breath though, an’ that gown ain’t your color.  Hangonnasecond…”  Ben began rummaging in a cabinet on the wall, pulling out sweatpants and other workout gear in various sizes.  
  
Peter took a breath, and shut his eyes.  
He tried not to remember the oily, pervasive touch of the symbiote’s skin meshing with his, and failed.  …He shuddered involuntarily.  
  
A heavy metal gauntlet settled quietly on Peter’s left shoulder, and stayed there.  
  
-  
  
The Iron Horse Garage, 10:20 AM.  
  
  
A sheet of heavy, translucent plastic was stretched across the jagged hole in the middle of the roll-down garage door.  From inside, Steve heard the hard-edged whine of a circular saw slicing through sheet-metal.  
He shut his Harley off, and walked up to the damaged door.  The circular saw inside fell silent.    
  
“Hi!  Can I come in?”  Steve called, around the edge of the plastic.    
  
“Steve!  Yeah, just step through,” Tony called back, setting down his saw.  
  
The galvanized steel around the edges of the hole had actually been  _melted_ , Steve noticed as he lifted the plastic aside.  
Inside, the garage floor was covered with bright metal shavings, and a series of what looked like replacement slats for the damaged garage door lay half-finished on a folding table to Steve’s right.  Tony tugged off his gloves, and pushed his safety goggles up.    
Steve looked from Tony to the hole melted in the door, and back again.  
  
“I had a slight billing dispute with one of my customers,” Tony grinned.  “-How was your ride?”  
  
Steve paused, not sure how to put his thoughts into words.    
He’d broken up what he’d been told was a riot at a small college campus, and learned that two of the Red Skull’s henchmen had been behind the whole thing.    
He’d slept in the grass, woken up with the dawn, and watched a butterfly dry its wings.    
He’d found Peggy Carter again, her mind broken by the last day he’d seen her during the war.    
He’d learned that her sister Sharon, the lovely agent thirteen, had joined SHIELD for the express purpose of… well… stalking him, and that Nick Fury had figured it out months ago and decided to  _let_  her.   
  
 “Enlightening,” Steve replied, unzipping his bomber jacket and folding it over one arm.  “-But it’s good to be back.”    
  
“You look thirsty,” Tony observed.  
  
“…You just want me to get you a beer, don’t you,” Steve realized, amused.  
  
“Would you mind?”  Tony grinned, hopefully.  
  
Steve smiled and shook his head, but he got two beers out of the refrigerator and handed one over.  Tony was dusted head-to-boots in fine metal shavings, and the damp fabric of his once-white A-line clung to his chest and the covered arc reactor in ways that were very difficult not to draw.  
Steve opened his beer and drank, shutting his eyes.  
  
Tony watched Steve’s lips close around the mouth of the brown glass bottle, and swallowed.  
  
“So… what are you going to do now?”  Tony asked, somewhat at random.  
  
“I think…”  Steve said slowly, lowering the bottle and studying a reflection in the glass, “…I’m going to concentrate on being an Avenger for a while.  That way I can do some good as Captain America with a bunch of folks that…”  Steve paused.  
  
“…That you can trust?”  Tony supplied.  
  
“-Yeah,”  Steve admitted,  “The Avengers do assist SHIELD sometimes, but I get the feeling that Fury’s been trying to put things past me that he wouldn’t have tried on Ms. Van Dyne and the others, and I don’t like it.”  
  
“Welcome to the future, Steve,” Tony said, wryly.  
  
“Oh, I don’t know… nineteen seventy one’s not so bad,” Steve began, carefully.  
  
“No?”  Tony’s eyebrows lifted.  
  
“No.  It’s  _different_ , I‘ll grant you, and I never expected to be on a superhero team funded by a- -a  _fashion designer_ …”  
  
‘Woman’, Tony’s amused mind translated, easily.  
  
“-But if heroes today can represent all the things Hitler hated most, I think I can live with it.”  Steve asserted.  
  
“You mean like Power Man?”  Tony asked.  
  
“I mean Power Man, Misty Knight, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch… you…”  Steve listed.  
  
Tony froze.  
  
“…And me,” Steve finished, a little consciously.  
  
“-You’re not Jewish, are you,” Tony stated, with a lopsided smirk.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Neither am I.”  
  
“…Do you want to dance?”  Steve asked.  
  
“Yes,”  Tony said without hesitation,   “-C-12.”  
  
-


End file.
